Postcards from Travel Near and Far by Jia-Rui

90017, Downtown Los Angeles

What could be better for a snacky pregnant woman than a studio lot full of grilled cheese? Bryan and I went to the Grilled Cheese Invitational this afternoon. The Mendocino Farms pork belly cubano with Chinese hot mustard was my favorite of the day. We also polished off a Feast food truck grilled cheese with sweet chili paste and Thai basil; a Cynthia Washburn “ruby canard” sandwich with truffled chevre and duck; a Campanile cured meats and cherry peppers grilled cheese; and the Oaks Gourmet‘s Black Forest bacon and Cotswold cheese sandwich. There was buzz at the Daily Dish for the “Elvis:” chocolate marscarpone, brulee-ed bananas and bacon. But by the time we ordered, there was no bacon, so it was a let down. (I also felt bad for the guy who spent the entire afternoon with a hand torch treating the bananas.) The disappointment was quickly fixed by churro tots with whipped cream at the Border Grill truck.

P.S. The surprise of the day was the free sample Kruegermann pickle, which is the best pickle I’ve had out of a jar. When we asked the guy where we could buy them in L.A., he said, “Do you really love them?” Uh, yeah, I’m pregnant. We left with a free jar.

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I'm a journalist based in Los Angeles who has always said that writing postcards for a living would be a dream job. The posts -- short enough to fit on an actual postcard -- chronicle recent travels near and far. I could blab on about being inspired by epistolary novels, the short poems of Emily Dickinson, and the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" pieces, but I'll just say that I'm aiming to give you a sense of flavor of a place without boring you to death. Wish you were here!